Never Let the Saucepan Boil Dry Chapter 3: In a Lonely Place

The threat of fire in primary school terrified me. The rising scream of the siren for surprise fire drills turned my legs to jelly as I stood up from my desk to leave the room for the playground to be counted. If fire had to happen, I thought, surely it would not make such a terrible noise. I had nightmares about the noise of the smoke alarm at home. I heard rumours about that Mrs Forrest the headteacher would appear to make the evacuation more difficult, blowing a whistle then shouting ‘Hazard!’ and forcing pupils to choose a different exit. This may just have been hearsay. The fact remains that Mrs Forrest had already let a very real hazard into the school, in the form of my primary six teacher.

     There was something resigned and helpless about the puppet I had made the preceding year, as I came to collect him from the classroom of my previous teacher, Mrs Smith, in late August, 1984. In her class, I had known friendship, leisure, hard work and all one might expect from a profitable time at school. The year to follow would have little, if any, of these.

     On our first day in Miss Rae’s class, she shouted at some who were not quite quick enough for her, ‘That’s not how you spell my name!’ This was hardly surprising when she had not written it for us. I deduced how to spell her name from a picture on the wall someone had done the previous year, and in avoiding being shouted at that first day, hoped to keep out of trouble. It was to be a vain hope.

     I had had other teachers, and different styles of teaching, before Miss Rae, but none quite like her, before or since. Taking that puppet home would be the last time for a long while I would participate in anything creative. Like the Soviet Union our media taught us to fear at the time, there was a drabness, a uniformity, to that classroom. I was a natural conformist, never inclined to answer back or be a problem to teachers. What I did not know then is I have a disability, a mild autistic spectrum disorder, more pronounced as a child, which caused me to have poor physical co-ordination and to lag behind my peers in some of my social responses. Intellectually at least, it had not been a major problem before. I later learned that Miss Rae had an established pattern of verbally abusing a child, usually one with a disability or health problem, and usually a boy. By the end of my first month in her class, she had fastened on me.

     Her moods varied: sometimes she was almost normal, at least, how I expected a teacher to be normally; other times, her eyes stood out, and her face was truly frightening, twisted in a dark passion. Going to school that year was to daily experience an atmosphere of great cruelty and fear.

     Perhaps the most complex element of the situation for me lay in the fact that she went to a church, as did I, to my father’s. I knew that my father respected the minister of the church she went to, and all that he stood for. This was perhaps the most significant factor in my not telling my parents of what I was going through at the time. In CS Lewis’ autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he talks of his own experience of attending a school where the headteacher was also cruel and abusive: ‘It might, perhaps, be expected that this story… would presently be blown away by the real story which we had to tell after we had gone to Belsen. But this did not happen. I believe it rarely happens. If the parents in each generation always or often knew what really goes on at their sons’ schools, the history of education would be very different.’ (Surprised by Joy, p.30)

     I had an operation in mid-December 1984, necessitating the straightening of a disfigured left foot which I had been born with, and taking me out of school altogether until January 1985. Then came the next class project. Following my release from the plaster of some eight weeks’ duration, the whole class had to draw their left feet. Mine was clearly shown up as something small and stunted.

     Miss Rae would attack any class member who did not seem to conform to her values, prompting a debate on the colour of one pupil’s skin: ‘Why does she look like that?’ and pointing out the worn shoes of another as an object of ridicule. She would tell stories of ministers’ children committing suicide: of such an event apparently happening on the roof of that very school, to someone she had claimed to know.

     Other adults would rarely see the rage behind her mask. She helped run the school Scripture Union, where children would learn about the Bible and related topics in a relaxed atmosphere; this was certainly the case with the other two teachers. One day in class, Miss Rae would stop shouting at me (for no reason, as was usual) and then ask me if I were coming to the SU, in quite a different voice. Around these other adults, she would seem withdrawn, moody, almost sulky. One event was held in the Skene Street church. I was disturbed to see her in those familiar surroundings. ‘Do you know where that is?’ she demanded, lunging at me in the class in her familiar threatening way in the classroom. I looked at her offering a prayer for an SU event, her eyes shut. ‘We pray about this SU Happening, Lord,’ she said aloud in the church. ‘To whom does she think she’s praying?’ I wondered. ‘What does she think she’s doing?’

     I had one more year at Mile End Primary School. On our last day in Miss Rae’s class, they cheered her three times. This marked the beginning of my dislocation from their version of reality. It seemed hard to believe that my classmates, who had seen at first hand what I had gone through, would not stand with me. CS Lewis says: ‘…long before the end we had known one another too long and suffered too much together not to be, at the least, very old acquaintance. That, I think, is why Belsen did me, in the long run, so little harm. Hardly any amount of oppression from above takes the heart out of a boy like oppression from his fellows.’ (Surprised by Joy, p.31) It was different for me, however. Some classmates carried on where Miss Rae had left off, taunting me, so that I preferred to be left alone. I withdrew more and more into a world of my own, one that was gradually freezing over.

     I was easily in tears, in the aftermath of primary 6. Our primary 7 half of the class was relatively small, no more than 10 boys. The three remaining girls left after primary 6. Jonathan was withdrawn and uncommunicative. It was easy to feel he was punishing me, too. I was aware his parents had separated. He did not appear to enjoy coming to school any more, either. He often looked tired. I was often tearful. Once, a class project was to design a monster. I based mine on a drawing from a book of classic children’s literature from some kind elderly people in the church. It had a long neck, large eyes and was a bit like a cross between ET and Nessie. It was mocked by the members of primary 6, from whom I had to borrow a soldering device to cut out its eyes from the polystyrene. I was annoyed at the lack of respect from the younger members of the class. They would not have done so the previous year on their own initiative for fear of Miss Rae herself, or before then. I was still the class idiot. They found fault with its neck, eyes and everything. I was annoyed, but still the tears came. I thought of the kindness of the people who had given me the book, and the stable church background, and the comfort I only had now on weekends. The class was taken by a Miss MacCallum, a young and idealistic lady who was often out on strike later that year. I found her a good teacher, but could not enjoy the class as I might. The guilt and pain of my Primary 6 treatment was always with me.

     Andrew from the younger half of my Primary 7 group offered me some friendship. We talked about Doctor Who and played games of “Tentacles”, involving walking around the dinner hut and pretending there were tentacle monsters on the playground a foot or so below. We had imaginary guns and lightsabers to deal with them. We went to the Bon Accord Baths to learn to swim. While there, the instructor asked if I could tell Miss MacCallum she was a bridesmaid at his wedding, and to be remembered to her. He would ask each week if I had done so. I was simply not capable of venturing this kind of communication at that stage, and each week he clearly grew more annoyed that I had not managed to perform this little job. He eventually had to give up. Once, Miss MacCallum took me outside the classroom and told me I had nothing to fear from Geoffrey, a boy who had blown hot and cold, sometimes threatening me, other times seeming more friendly. He however was not the main problem, nor why I was so vulnerable and afraid. I loathed the innovation of afternoon breaks on Fridays, only flagging up my isolation in the playground.

     The legacy of all this stress had its consequences. I was now very often tired and distressed at the prospect of going to school, and could not tell my parents, particularly when Miss Rae and her church was endorsed by their values. It is not surprising that by now I dreaded going to school altogether, to the place that, like in Lewis’ account, had seemed a concentration camp to me.

      I experienced headaches and stomach-aches, and wanted nothing better than to stay at home. I was referred to the Cornhill Hospital, to a children’s psychologist, for the first time. I was admitted to hospital for a series of regular tests for a week in March 1986, involving blood and urine samples. By then I did not have the strong spirit with which I had coped with my foot restructuring operation in December 1984. I wept at times. I was discharged and the results shown as having no physical cause. My parents were relieved, and also angry when I persisted in wanting to stay home from school. I was very grieved at the damage of school spreading to my home life in this way.    

     When I left Mile End, Mrs Forrest the headteacher said brightly to me, ‘Come back, any time you like.’ I looked blankly at her. I thought, ‘Why? Why would I ever want to come back to this place of so much pain?’ I later learned that she had decided to accept Miss Rae into Mile End, a year before I was “taught” by her, despite her being asked to leave other schools. To Mrs Forrest’s philosophy, Miss Rae was not a problem. In so thinking, she failed to care for Miss Rae herself, constantly unhappy, and sometimes quite hysterical in some of her rages; and as the head of the school, she abused the trust my parents and others had placed in her.

     Summer holidays brought the end of my time at Mile End, which I could not mourn, and a welcome break. The Aberdeen Grammar School, to which I was bound after the recess, had a major fire in July 1986, just after we had had a tour of it. Its future hung on a knife-edge until the Council eventually decided to rebuild it, and put up temporary portacabins, especially for the English classes, on the large school lawn. During the summer I met my relatives from Hong Kong again. I returned to the loft to accommodate them, and spent time dreaming and enjoying my toys. I read Enid Blyton’s mystery stories at Glensaugh, a holiday house in the country belonging to some church people who let us stay there.

     Autumn 1986 brought the prospect of secondary school, with a new potential. However, I found it quite impossible to take full advantage of this in the social area, especially as some of the same pupils came with me. I could not find the new peers I met sincere either: I had been tried too much by the past two years, and could not believe they really wanted to be friends with me. I went on in my own world as these opportunities withered around me. New classmates, my parents, the teachers seemed to expect me to perform to a script I could not hear or see. Only in the Scripture Union did I feel at home, as a connection to the values of home and church. A girl I found attractive from the start said ‘Hallo, David’ on going home. Mum asked me who she was on collecting me one day, but I could not say.

     “Consider your primary school career”, said a paper in the English class. “Career” seemed rather a grand word with which to dignify the system I had suffered so recently. The first two years at the Grammar proceeded as increasingly anti-social, with only average academic results. I wrote warmly of Uncle Fraser as someone with whom I had a ‘rapport’ in my second year English class. Only in the SU did I build and maintain relationships, albeit awkwardly. I went on my first weekend trip to Kilvarock Castle in February 1988. Like the small guttering flame at the end of the oil lamp which is the SU symbol, this was an enclave from which to withdraw from the chaos and noise of the school in general. As second year ended in June-July 1988, I continued to collect toys and was aware of how little I had left socially. I did not see Jonathan any more. He had gone to a private school after Mile End.Quite early in the holidays, I was to go and stay a week with Uncle Fraser in Kinlochbervie.

     I went to the far north with a sense of enjoyment. It was the same, yet different as before. The weather was cold and wet, quite typically, but I enjoyed that too. On his way to the village, he bought a beachball, a vivid contrast with his regular black minister’s outfit. We went to the Smoo Cave in Durness. As the week progressed, I could feel changes coming. I had produced a tentative moustache for a year before, not quite enough to be worth shaving. Now my voice changed, among other things. I became aware, in the course of that one week, how my priorities and attitudes were changing. I became less interested in toys and collections. I had preserved wrappers for chocolate biscuits in a postcard album. Now I let them all go, and lost some weight. In the Kinlochbervie church, in the course of the Sunday service, Uncle Fraser asked me to pray. I had become a member of the Aberdeen congregation in October 1987. Most of the congregation in Kinlochbervie were elderly ladies. I looked around for someone else called David. ‘He means you, dear,’ whispered one of the ladies. I cleared my throat and made an effort.

     ‘Can you swim?’ he said the next day while contemplating a trip across Loch Innes, as if this were perfectly normal. He seemed worried about a possible leak in the dinghy we used to get there, but in the end it held and no swimming was required. In some ways, it was to be my goodbye to childhood in a place I valued so much. I joined my parents and Irene in a holiday caravan on the west coast, Glenelg. I was aware how differently I felt, towards relationships, toys, food, everything in life. It took some adjusting to be back in the regular ‘bubble’ again. I went back to Aberdeen with a new confidence. I ate Kendal mint cake, a present from Aunt Elizabeth’s visit to the Lake District, watched what was then my solitary Doctor Who video, Death to the Daleks. I enjoyed the rest of holidays. My cousin Ian came to stay from Hong Kong. He eventually gained admission to Aberdeen University to study Zoology, given he did not get his first choice of Medicine. Better times were on the way.